Delaware meetings to be aired on TV; group seeks to foster

August 1, 2012 —

From now on, town council meetings for the Town of Delaware, which are held at the town hall building in Hortonville, will be video recorded and aired on Time Warner Cable channel 23 on Mondays from 8 to 10 p.m.

The first such meeting recorded was the one that took place on Wednesday, July 18. The first scheduled airing was on July 30. The July 18 meeting will be re-aired on subsequent Mondays until the next video becomes available.

Although the idea to air the meetings was first considered over two years ago by local artist Linda Bastian, the project only recently got off the ground after she met three other local artists with extensive video experience and equipment.

The group represents a wide spectrum of the town in terms of age, ranging from Bastian’s 71 to cameramen Isaac Diebboll and Nyssa Calkin’s 23 and 26 respectively. Jen Watts, 38, will provide technical assistance in formatting for TV.

The group describes its mission, which also will involve filming other public functions, as “encouraging, fostering and developing accuracy, openness, transparency, honesty, civility, accountability and increased citizen participation in the governance of the Town of Delaware.” Calkin said, “Though we all have our own views/opinions on each subject discussed, the final video will remain true to what occurs at each meeting. We have every intention to be sure the final film is from a neutral standpoint.”

The group is investigating the possibility of making their tapes available to the local branch libraries.
Diebboll said, “I think fracking has highlighted how our government does work and how it doesn’t work. But most of all, I think it has highlighted who we are. I think it has made our beings completely visible to one another. This is our greatest opportunity to build bridges, to strengthen our community, because we’ve never had a common ground [fracking] large enough to include everyone. It is up to us how we use this common ground.”

Diebboll said that he had spoken to those who spoke up for fracking at the last meeting. He said that they invited him to visit a drill site with them, and that he has offered to videotape drilling procedures for them.